Well, I was very grumpy because I came back from a “College of Liberal Arts and Science” meeting and thought “what nonsense…hours and hours of time spent coming up with …THIS???”

So I was about to go on a tirade about how many conservatives are right about some of their criticisms of liberal arts education…but then I decided to read statements from other liberal arts colleges. And..they weren’t that bad.

Here is a typical one: it appears to be reasonable to me. But still: any statement has zero effect on how I teach, how I research, or how I think about our curriculum. In service courses: “what tools do they need to master in able to learn their major”? In major courses: “what do I expect a math major to have mastery of? How do we help them attain such mastery?”

The problem is that some mission statements have stuff about “equality” (our proposed statement does). So it follows that anything that appears to be contrary to “equality” must be bad or wrong, right? Hence you have things like this: (Jerry Coyne’s website)

Finally: a sensible discussion of “race”
And by “sensible,” of course, I mean a discussion that aligns with my own views. I’ve often written that while there are no finite and strongly genetically demarcated human “races”, there are meaningful and statistically diagnostic differences between populations, ethnic groups, or whatever you want to call them. This is in opposition to the common Left-wing view that races are purely “social constructs” having no biological reality.

Well, there aren’t a finite number of groups whose members are 100% genetically differentiated from other groups. But when you take all genes together, there are sufficient average frequency differences that one can discern statistical clusters that, in turn, allow you to use lots of genes to pretty much diagnose where somebody’s from and who their ancestors were. These “statistical clusters” are real, not social constructs, for they fall out regardless of the politics or biases of the investigator.

Recognizing their existence by no means justifies bigotry or stereotyping, but we shouldn’t dismiss the existence of those clusters simply because, in the past, people with an incorrect idea of “race” have used differences to justify segregation and prejudice. Yet all too often, as with genetic differences among ethnic groups, behavioral differences between the sexes, and evolutionary psychology, those on the Left simply dismiss entire fields because of a fear that scientific research will justify discrimination.

To understand why it is so dangerous for geneticists and anthropologists to simply repeat the old consensus about human population differences, consider what kinds of voices are filling the void that our silence is creating. Nicholas Wade, a longtime science journalist for The New York Times, rightly notes in his 2014 book, “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History,” that modern research is challenging our thinking about the nature of human population differences. But he goes on to make the unfounded and irresponsible claim that this research is suggesting that genetic factors explain traditional stereotypes.

One of Mr. Wade’s key sources, for example, is the anthropologist Henry Harpending, who has asserted that people of sub-Saharan African ancestry have no propensity to work when they don’t have to because, he claims, they did not go through the type of natural selection for hard work in the last thousands of years that some Eurasians did. There is simply no scientific evidence to support this statement. Indeed, as 139 geneticists (including myself) pointed out in a letter to The New York Times about Mr. Wade’s book, there is no genetic evidence to back up any of the racist stereotypes he promotes.

Another high-profile example is James Watson, the scientist who in 1953 co-discovered the structure of DNA, and who was forced to retire as head of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in 2007 after he stated in an interview — without any scientific evidence — that research has suggested that genetic factors contribute to lower intelligence in Africans than in Europeans. […]

What makes Dr. Watson’s and Mr. Wade’s statements so insidious is that they start with the accurate observation that many academics are implausibly denying the possibility of average genetic differences among human populations, and then end with a claim — backed by no evidence — that they know what those differences are and that they correspond to racist stereotypes.

In other words, refusing to admit that there ARE differences in frequencies of certain alleles in certain population clusters often leads to “see, the racist stereotypes must either be right or at least have a kernel of truth to them.” And, in my opinion, the regressive left (often found on college campuses) and the alt-right are on agreement of the implication; the “solution” the regressive left offers is to dismiss genuine science as “junk science; a tool of the oppressive white patriarchy” and the racist right is “see: the snowflakes are afraid of the truth, which WE are bold enough to talk about”.

Speaking of campaigns: I always wondered about how effective some campaigns are and if there is a point of “diminishing returns”.

Despite this being one of the more obvious takeaways from 2016 — that campaigns don't really move the needle too much in high-turnout elections — you rarely hear it because it's unflattering to the professional class that reporters rely on as sources.

And there is some research that backs this up. That is one reason I no longer phonebank; who wants to be annoyed at home? I might do some GOTV stuff; getting your people to the polls is essential. But if the turn out is high..well, it is mostly about the candidate (after a certain point anyway).

I bought this book on a whim (while browsing through a book store). And while I think that this review is a fair one (the author is more of an advocate than scholar in the book, and a couple of conclusions are speculative, at best), I am glad that I read it.

First for the claims: I was skeptical about the claim that the “absent black fathers” was “debunked”. However, the book contains many resources and I can say that such a “bumper sticker claim” about black fathers is way too simplistic; the actual situation is far more complicated. I highly recommend surfing to this well researched, very even handed Daily Kos article referenced by the text.

However there is much in the book that is all too credible and informative. The stories about what happened to black families that attempted to move into white neighborhoods in northern states was disgusting and heart breaking.

The author takes our society to task for huge educational gaps that are in place, largely due to underfunding mostly black school districts (not only in the south) and our federal government’s indifference to it, even while extra emphasis was placed on education for everyone else during the “Sputnik scare” era.

Some of this, I knew. But what I found out is that my civil rights history education is inadequate; I basically leaned this stuff at a high school/college freshman level and no further.
Here is one example: I knew about the marches, boycotts, sit ins and some of the famous court cases. What I didn’t know was the very well thought out strategy that the NAACP used with regards to education: they said “ok, you say separate but equal”, ok, we will go along. Now you have to prove “equal”” and of course, it was NOT equal…not even close. And the NAACP could prove it in court..and it was economically impossible to set up two equal systems of education. That put the segregationists in a bind; some took extreme steps of shutting down their public education system completely. But overall, the NAACP prevailed.

So, this book was part of a much needed “education refresher” for me.

One other note: the book embarrassed me a bit. My feeling is that, well, anti-black prejudice is due to perceived black underachievement (that is, poor blacks are hated because they are poor). It turns out, well, a lot of people really do not like black people, period..no matter how how successful.

“You had people in that group who were protesting the taking down of what to them is a very, very important statue,” Trump said, before suggesting that Lee and other Confederate-era generals, including Stonewall Jackson, are the victims of historical revisionism attempting to delegitimize their roles.

Speaking rhetorically, Trump asked reporters whether George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both slave owners, should suffer the same fate and have their statues removed. “You’re changing history; you’re changing culture,” he said.

Trump reiterated his condemnation of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists. But he also made clear that he believed that some of the counterprotesters were armed and took aggressive actions that helped spark the violence.

Hmmm, so Confederate leaders are on the level of our founding fathers? Yes, you sometimes heard such nonsense in southern circles.

Well…back to the point in my post:

I’ve heard all sorts of things called “bigotry”; they range from being skeptical of using pronouns, wondering if transwomen with male genitals should use women’s “gang showers”, pointing out that the ACT and SAT really do have predictive power (with regards to future success in STEM fields) or for pointing out that, statistically speaking, there is more social pathology in the lower economic classes (though research suggests that poverty is the cause, not the effect), my contempt for the cries of “cultural appropriation”, etc.

I am loath to scream “bigotry” because, well, when one over uses the word, it loses its power for when it truly applies.

And I have a hard time distinguishing unusual amounts of anger for the usual, run of the world noise I hear from my fellow lefties. If the background is full of constant static, it is tough to distinguish a real signal.

And so..to see how Americans are reacting to Trump…I am turning to…the feed of “mainstream Republicans” more so than the feed of my fellow Democrats.

but note the tone: it was “peer to peer”. I think that is the most effective type of messaging.

The above is from my 1976 (junior year of high school) yearbook. Yes, we were The Rebels and I even had such flags on my bedroom wall; it was a “school pride” thing with me.
Now that you are seeing pushback against confederate monuments, well, you can just see the whining and complaining. Bottom line: many truly believe that “their heritage” is under attack. Yes that really isn’t what the flag was about. But, since I’ve been away, I’ve really become an outsider; they do not trust me as being “one of them”.

And that is my point.

When it comes to something as sensitive as race relations in the United States, the messenger matters.

Example: I have white friends who really have few, if any, good black friends. They simply do not accept that racial profiling by law enforcement is even “a thing”.

Yes, this is a conservative Republican. I agree with him on almost nothing. But listen to his experiences.

Here, there is no substitute for having different kinds of friends who experience life in the US differently than you do.

But when it comes to condemning white supremacyj, I’ll just say it. People will be more receptive to the message if it comes from a peer.

Barack Obama tried to do it but let's be real — people of color can't stamp out that unease. White America must do so. Trump isn't helping.

You know that your fiend likes you and understands your values. So you might be more likely to really listen to them.

Yes, my Facebook wall is full of old liberal hippies condemning white supremacy. But they are saying what you expect them to say. The person who is at every protest…well, their speaking out surprises no one; they are part of the background.

But a white conservative businessperson might have some personal pull with other white conservatives. A white Republican talking to a predominately white church might get listened to.

You’ve probably heard about the events in Charlottesville where white supremacy groups were protesting..and the next day one of those racist thugs ran over counter protesters with a car, killing one and injuring several others.

Please make this as simple as possible. White supremacy groups are to be condemned, period. No “ifs”, “ands”, “buts”, “butwhatabout”, etc. It really isn’t that difficult and no, 45 has not issued such a straight forward condemnation whereas many other top Republicans have.

This is not about principled debates over: tax structure, what sort of social safety nets to have and how to implement them, affirmative action (what type, if any and how it is done), crime (declining, but still an issue) etc.

Dear conservative reader (if there are any): I am not trying to turn you into a liberal. I couldn’t even if I tried.

Islam: Of course, one can be a good American and a good Muslim at the same time; millions are. But currently, Islam is more of a “total way of life” than other religions are, at least for the bulk of those who practice it. As Shadi Hamid
of the Brookings Institution writes:

This fact gets at something deeper, which often goes unsaid because it suggests there is — or at least there may be — a clash of cultures. Islam seems, at least by Western standards, unusually assertive and uncompromising. Critics might see it as full-blown aggressiveness. But Muslims often point to these qualities as evidence of Islam’s vitality and relevance in a supposedly secular age. To put it a bit differently, this is why many Muslims like being Muslim.

Whether consciously done or not, to be unapologetically Muslim today is to, in a way, show that other futures are possible, that the end of history may in fact have more than one destination. If Islam has been — and will continue to be — resistant to secularism, then the very existence of practicing Muslims serves as a constant reminder of this historical and religious divergence.

I realize that some of my fellow American Muslims will view such arguments as inconvenient, portraying Islam in a not-so-positive light. But it is not my job to make Islam look good, and it helps no one to maintain fictions that make us feel better but don’t truly reflect the power and relevance of religion.

In the West, the common response to the challenge of theological diversity has been banal statements of religious “universality.” All too often, interfaith dialogue, however well-intentioned, is about papering over what makes us — or at least our beliefs — different. It is a tenet of our American faith that we’re all basically the same and ultimately want the same things. This is true in some ways, but not in every way.

The crisis of culture and identity — one that sees the rise of the far-right and white nativism in our own country — makes it clear that our differences and divides are real. We would all be better off acknowledging — and addressing — those differences rather than pretending they don’t exist.

Unfortunately, the conversation often goes off the rails, as this Brown University professor points out. It isn’t as simple as “it is whitey’s fault” or “black people should quit committing crimes” (which is what one often sees in the internet discussions). All too often, “activists” dismiss statistics that they don’t like as being “racist”:

But that misses the point. Law enforcement is there to serve *all* of its citizens. And all too often, law enforcement is seen as a THREAT to ordinary black people, rather than as an entity there to protect and serve. Just listen to what a Republican Senator has to say:

And as far as protestors: no, I don’t like many of the more strident ones. Frankly, I think that what the more strident ones are doing are turning people TOWARD Donald Trump.
But some of the anger directed toward them is irrational…and yes, even well off, well educated people have vented their irrational anger in public.

I watched this discussion on CNN; the old argument “well, if Blacks committed fewer crimes, they wouldn’t get arrested as much.
No, liberals don’t want to hear this, but there is a grain of truth in that assertion. But what conservatives don’t want to hear is nicely summed up in this article in Reason:

In this view, African Americans have only themselves to blame for the presence and behavior of cops in their neighborhoods. If they would get serious about cleaning up the problems in their own communities, police would not be arresting or killing so many black people.

There’s an element of truth to this line of argument. Violent crime rates are far higher among blacks than among whites and other groups. One reason cops have a disproportionate number of interactions with African-American males is that these men commit a disproportionate number of offenses.

Where the argument fails is in its assumption that blacks are complacent about these realities and that whites are blameless. The gist of the message is that blacks created the problem and blacks need to solve it. […]

The common impulse of whites, then and now, was to blame blacks for pathologies that whites played a central role in creating. Criminologist Charles Silberman wrote in 1978 that “it would be hard to imagine an environment better calculated to evoke violence than the one in which black Americans have lived.” Pretending black crime is a black-created problem is like pretending New Orleans never got hit by a hurricane.

The Giuliani view omits some vital facts. The epidemic of unarmed blacks being killed by police comes not when black crime is high but when it is low. Homicides committed by African Americans declined by half between 1991 and 2008.

Since the early 1990s, arrests of black juveniles have plunged by more than half. In New York City, where Eric Garner was killed by police, the rate of homicides by blacks is down by 80 percent. In Chicago, where most murders are committed by African Americans, the number last year was the lowest since 1965—and this year’s could be lower yet.

What is also easy to forget in the denunciation of black crime is that the vast majority of blacks are not criminals. In any given year, less than 5 percent of African Americans are involved in violent crime as perpetrators or victims. The fact that blacks make up a large share of the violent criminal population gives many whites the impression that violent criminals make up a large share of the black population. They don’t.

Why don’t more blacks living in bad neighborhoods learn to behave like sober middle-class suburbanites? One reason is the shortage of stable families, steady incomes, good schools and safe streets. If you grow up with those advantages, it’s relatively easy to do the right thing. If you don’t, it’s a lot harder.

People trapped in a poor and dangerous slum can’t depend on the authorities to keep them safe. They face serious threats every time they leave home. But a young black man who packs or uses a weapon to protect himself against gangs is committing a crime. Even motivated, well-intended kids can wind up in jail.

I can recommend Steven Pinker’s book Better Angels of Our Nature. Though the book is very large, it does have a section about inner city violence. Much of it stems from the citizens not trusting law enforcement seriously; hence many take matters into their own hands to solve disputes. Middle class people call the police and take others to court.

They seem to think “if we make ourselves into enough of a nuisance they will HAVE to give in to our demands”. But I’ve seen no evidence of that happening. I know my reaction is “hmmm, I am glad that I don’t live there and if I did, I’d be looking to leave”. But I have not studied what effect such protests have had; if a reader has a good reference, I’d like to see it.

And I’ll get to the crux of the issue: yes, the police should serve all citizens, and all too frequently the citizens that they are encountering are, well, less than exemplary. Ok, many are out and out losers that I’d rather not associate with.

I am not opposed to negative political ads. After all, what is to stop a politician from embellishing his/her record or from making unrealistic promises? Heck, even I can promise to cut taxes and increase services.

Republicans remind their base that Democrats are evil and stupid people. We want to take away money from hard working people and give it to people like this:

Who, in turn, just have more kids and end up in jail:

And, of course, we try to “keep out God” and are attempting to bring in Sharia Law and just let all of these other second rate nations just walk all over us.

But the Democrats remind US that the Republicans are evil and stupid people. Republicans reject science and embrace racism and misogyny; they want a “return to white America” and to turn our country into a theocracy.

So, the political rhetoric we hear isn’t designed to persuade but rather designed to get our people to show up and vote.

And yes, I understand why they do that. But while I love politics and love following it, I regret not having the kind of policy based discussions that I could have with those who see things differently from the way I do.

And, unfortunately, when people try to make a point, too often it is made in a way that attacks rather than invites discussion:

Yes, WalMart: the idea is they pay their workers too little to live on, so the public, in effect, subsidizes them with public aid. And of course, there is corporate tax break and oil subsidies.

Now one might argue that corporations employ people, do some basic research and make things for us. But then, one can also argue that public aid IS stimulus to the economy.

Think of it this way: suppose I got 100,000 dollars. I’d end up looking for a good, safe, long term investment. On the other hand, if 20 poor families got 5000 dollars each, they’d spend it on things (food and other items) thereby putting the money directly into the economy.

But, because we are too busy yelling at the other stupid, evil people, we don’t have this discussion often enough.

Now yes, BLM is more about law enforcement treating everyone fairly and giving the same benefit of the doubt to black people as everyone else gets. Yes, that is difficult to do, given the nature of human prejudice (not particular to white people; we evolved to reason inductively).

I suppose the rub is that law enforcement shouldn’t be a mechanism to keep “us” (those with a little bit of wealth) safe from those who don’t have any but rather as an entity that protects everyone, including those who have to live in underserved areas. I remember reading in Steven Pinker’s book Better Angels that much of the violence in underserved areas is the result of vigilantism; people there do not feel confident that law enforcement will take their complaints seriously but will instead either ignore them or arrest them for something else. Hence they take the law into their own hands.

About Blueollie

To keep track of my sports activities. I rarely train for anything anymore; mostly I just do workouts of the following types: running, walking, weight lifting and swimming. My best ultra accomplishment was walking 101 miles in 24 hours in 2004. These days, I walk a marathon every once in a while (5:50 to 7 hours) There was a time when I could run a sub 40 minute 10K (did that once), but that was another lifetime ago; these a days 2427-2825 25:50-27:45 minutes for a 5K would be more like it. I also have an off and on interest in yoga and in weight training. My lifetime PB in the bench is 310; currently I do sets of 4-5 with 190.

To discuss the football, basketball or baseball game I’ve been to. Since 2011, I started to attend live football games regularly (University of Illinois, sometimes Illinois State, sometimes either the Colts or Bears of the NFL…don’t get me started on the Rams) ; I’ve attended Bradley Basketball games (men and women) for some time. In the past 3 years, I started to watch live baseball again (mostly the Peoria Chiefs and Bradley University).

From time to time, I post what I am thinking about mathematically

I often post links to science articles, especially articles about cosmology and evolution.

I am very sympathetic to the “new atheist” movement, though some might consider me to be an agnostic. I reject any notion of a deity that interferes with physical events, but remain agnostic to the idea that there might be something “grand and wonderful” (Dawkins’ phrase) outside of our current spacetime continuum.

I am a liberal Democrat who thinks that the current social atmosphere is tilted way too far toward the interests of big business, and I reject the idea that a “free market” cures all ills, though pure socialism doesn’t work either. I am also a believer in the freedom of speech, including speech that I might not like. Also, I’ve been involved (to a moderate degree) with political campaigns, ranging from City Council races up to Presidential races.

I like to post photos of trips and vacations.

I like women in spandex. 🙂

The 2016 election: I voted for Hillary Clinton and was dismayed that she lost the Electoral College, though I take a bit of comfort that a plurality of voters preferred her (by just over 2 percentage points!)

I see Donald Trump as an unqualified amateur who lacks the humility and deportment to be an effective president; I sure hope the time proves me wrong. I’ve been wrong before (e. g. my election prediction) and will be wrong again. I hope this is one of those times.